Not My Week

As the title says; it wasn't my week this week. Started Ronde van Vlaams-Brabant tour on a bloody hot Wednesday afternoon. Temperatures scorched up past 30 degrees so it made for some hot hard racing. Tried getting into the early moves but it all came to nothing. For someone reason my legs went to jelly after about 20k. Trying to get into the early break must have really taken it out of me but I still mowed on in the bunch. Legs started to get better at 70k and I managed to get in a small split going up one of the climbs. There was already a break up the road so we were working together to try and catch them but we couldn't. I manged to ride away from the group with 3k to go but was still 2mins behind the winner.
Stage 2 was just shit. Just shit. Punctured in the first 5kms and I just couldn't get the legs fired up for the whole race. If I feel like that at the beginning of races, normally by halfway my legs feel good again but for the whole day I felt like poo. Even on  pretty easy flat sections I was struggling. There was a 1k cobble climb that we did 8 times and the weird thing was I felt pretty awesome up that. I would be at the back of the bunch heading into that climb and then by the top I would be at the front but then on the flats I would be at the back again. Still managed to finish in the bunch.
Stage 3 was bit of a rest day. We only had a 10km Time Trial in the afternoon. I didn't have a TT bike so I knew I wasn't going to get a top result. Still gave it my all and managed to finish 44th or something and about 45 seconds down. Felt like I could've at least finished top 10 if I had a TT rig.
Stage 4 was even worse than stage 2 really. Woke up with a really really sore throat but I didn't let the get to me. Legs were feeling pretty good during warm up and I was still hoping for a good result. Started near the back of the group and once the flag dropped I started making my way up the bunch on the inside. We were hauling ass in the first 2k because it was slight downhill. Making my up to the front and then I hear a loud bang and then a heap of riders started hitting the deck. I couldn't stop in time and plowed into the riders on the ground. I flip over the handle bars and land on my back and head. I got up after a bit and my helmet was hardly on my head anymore. The helmet back strap had detached from the shell some how so must have had bit of an impact. I managed to clip it back on to my helmet and then I picked up my bike and rode a little bit further down the hill where the rest of the bunch was waiting because the race officials stopped the race. When I got down there I wasn't feeling too bad like my head wasn't sore or anything. I was talking to my mate and we were having a laugh because I had big hole in my jersey and I lost half of my racing and food and bent a few pins on my number. But once we started racing again I went all dizzy and disorientated. Just felt really weird and not 100%. I felt really nervous riding in the bunch again as well, everything looked really weird like I was sort of seeing double. I kept riding and went to the back to see if I would get better over time but na. Got to some steep as climb and then at the top was a big crosswind section and I just couldn't do it. My legs turned to crap and I still felt really weird. Tried riding in the car convoy to try and catch up but I just couldn't. It was a really technical course as well which made it harder. But yea, I just couldn't do it. Had to pull the pin after 30k. Was really gutted. Was really desperate to at least win a stage at that tour but it just wasn't my week.
The next day was horrible as well. Woke up stiff as and even more sick. My neck is the worst, all sides of it too; left side, right side, front, back. Ribs, back and abs are all bruised and sore as well. Still not feeling great today. Woke up with a sore throat again and a runny nose and headache so I've just been smashing back lemon and honey tea all day. Just feeling really blah at the moment. Just gonna have a few days off and fully recover before getting back into some serious training.
Anyway, onwards and upwards. Still looking for a first place in a race so I'm not coming home until I get one. That's whats keeping me motivated at the moment.
So yea.

Thanks for reading

Nick

Can't Remember

I'm struggling to remember what we got up to this week. It can't of been anything too exciting otherwise I would remember what I did. Hadn't raced since the tour last week cause I'm building up for Vlaams Brabant which is a 5 stage tour here in Belgium and it starts on Wednesday so looking forward to that. So yea, all I've done this week is ride and recovered really.
We did have a bbq on Thursday night because it was a stunner day. It's been bloody hot this week so we decided we needed to have a good old traditional NZ barby, too bad Andrew doesn't have a proper bbq. He did have this contraption that he said he made when he was 13 (so it's ancient) and it was basically a fire pit with legs and a grill. I think he stole the grilling plates from the sewer drains that you see on the side of the road cause this thing was pretty DIY but it did the trick. Had to get a fire going and then chucked some coal in then waited for the fire to die down and the coal to do its thing. Sipped back a few cold ones and cooked some sausys and paddies and kebabs. Was some good kai. Then we just chilled outside and played cards.
The weather this week has been stunner but maybe a little too stunner. It's been so hot and pretty impossible to sleep, especially where I'm sleeping which is upstairs. It got up to 33 degrees last week and we all couldn't stop sweating. Like last year, if you open the door and windows then you just get infested with flies. They're all splattered on the window at the moment. Mosquitoes have been a pain as well. They always fly through the big window in the room next to mine and come into my room cause I have no door. So I'm covered in mozzy bites at the moment. I can hear them as well and at night when I hear them I turn my light on on my phone and try to squash them when they land but they always land on the wall to my left or the roof and I can't whack the left wall or roof because it's hollow and I'll just end up waking everyone in the house and probably put a whole in it so I can't win. So whenever I hear them I just grab my pillow and start waving that in the air and that normally scares them off for a bit. Bloody mozzies.
There's been a couple thunderstorms at night too. The best one was on Saturday night. Every second you would see a flash of lightning somewhere. It was flashing every direction you looked. Some got bloody close cause after a second there would be a loud rumble and bang of thunder. Best thunderstorm I've ever seen by far. Lasted a good 2 and a bit hours I reckon. We just turned all the lights off in the house and watched it all happen. There's a crane just across the road so we were waiting and praying that the lightning would strike that. Who needs TV and computers when you have nature.
So yea that's pretty much it. Next weeks blog will be a bit more entertaining and longer and that will be on Monday. Hopefully go good at Brabant this week and come away with something primo.

Sweet, that's all.

Thanks for reading

Nick

Tour Time

Sorry for the late blog. We got back from France at 1.30am on Tuesday and we were out and about all day yesterday and then I had to cook up some kai so I didn't really have too much time to write a blog but now I'm pretty fresh and got time on my hands. But yea the start of the week was crappy as, pouring with rain all day and night, bit like home. Went for a 4.5 hour ride on Monday and it rained for 4.5 hours, then rained Tuesday, then rained Wednesday. After our ride on Wednesday, 4 of us went up to Roselare which is a fairly big town about 10km away and found a cafe that makes flat whites!!! It's a really cool cafe that's sort of hidden away and the guy who owns it makes some really awesome different coffees. First ordered a flat white and had a look at the menu again and there was a coffee called 'Cookie' so I thought I'd give that one a crack. Couldn't understand what was in it cause it was all written in Flemish in the menu but I was pretty certain that it would involve a cookie or something. It was like a coffee chocolate syrup at the bottom with milk, cream and cookie crumbles on top with caramel sauce. Sooooo good! So we were back there today and got another good old flat white and a berry crumble pie. Ka Pie. 

Ah yea the tour. The tour didn't go too badly I guess. Stayed up right which is a bonus considering the conditions on the second day. First stage was 163km of rolling short climbs which suited me alright. There was a sprint challenge at 19km (which is basically like a sprint prem like in the kermesses but they have a few of them through out the course and you win prizes) and then at 24km there was a KOM sprint (which stands for King Of the Mountain and if you cross the line first you win 6 points, then 4 points for 2nd, then 1 or 2 points for 3rd then whoever has the most points after the stage wins the Polka Dot jersey) so after the sprint challenge I decided to counter attack and went off the front solo for 5km and won the KOM sprint so I had 6 points in the bank. Not long after that a big break of about 25 riders got away, including Zeno, so I just had to sit in the bunch for most of the day because we had a man up the road. There were two more KOM's throughout the course and one rider in the break won both of them so he had 12 points and I only had 6 so I was sitting in second for that. The break stayed away and Zeno picked up 10th which is a good result for him. We were sitting about 30 seconds behind the winner and I rolled in about 58th place I think. 

Next day started off with a 12.8km Time Trial in the morning and then a 90km road race in the afternoon. Pissed with rain from morning till night. I borrowed one of the boys time trial bikes for the TT. I had a quick ride on it in the car park the night before and it seemed alright but once I started my warm up I knew it was way too small. The seat wasn't quite high enough and the seat was too far forward and the stem was too small so I was smashing my knees on my elbows. I had to sit right on the back of the seat  which wasn't too comfortable but didn't do too badly. I managed to catch my minute man after 8km and ended up around 20th place. I was 30 secs off the winner so I reckon I would've been up there if I had my own TT rig and I was also being extra careful round the corners cause it wasn't my bike and it was pissing with rain. Afternoon stage, still raining. My goal for that race was to not die. I just sat right up the front out of trouble for the whole race. Felt really good too and I was following a couple moves in the first few km of the race. There was one of those sprint challenges at around 6km so I attacked about a km before that and won that. I turned around and saw I had bit of a gap so I put my head down and kept drilling it because there was a KOM in 5km. Managed to stay away and won that but the KOM leader got 2nd so I had 12 points and he now had 16 points. That was the only KOM for the day so couldn't do too much more but stay out of trouble and that's just what I did. After the race I had to go up on the stage to collect my prize for winning the sprint challenge. Won an iPad mini and a tee. The t-shirt was too big so we used it as an oil rag but the iPad could come in handy. I'm just going to sell it cause I've already got an iPad. 

Last stage was a nice day and it was Bastille day so all the Frenchys were out in support. It was 153km of rolling and flat sections with lots of cross winds. I really wanted to get into a break that day so I could win all the KOM points on the course, there were 3 KOMs. Got into a small move fairly early and we had a small gap with about 7 riders but everyone stopped working so I attacked them and rode solo for a bit to see if anyone would come with me. There was a sprint challenge about 3km out from where I attacked so I put my head down to try and win another one of them. Crossed the line first again so picked up another prize. After I crossed the line I turned around and saw the bunch wasn't too far behind so I sat up and waited for them but it was actually a group of about 12 riders who got away. We rode hard in the crosswind section but then everyone just stopped working again which was frustrating. A couple people were still riding hard so I jumped on to them and we rolled through a bit but then for some reason the team that had the yellow jersey just sat on the front and mowed us down for no reason. Normally in tours, the team that has the yellow jersey will let a break go and then slowly bring it back near the end of the race. They do this because it's a lot easier to slowly bring back one break than to chase down every single attack in the race. Not long after being in the bunch another big attack went and I sat there watching them go thinking they will surely pull that back straight away. I would have tried to go with that break but I thought it would be a waste of energy because I was already pretty tired after my big effort before and I thought that it would be pulled back pretty quickly like what happened to the break I was in just before but nope, they stayed away for the whole race. Bugger. Just sat in the bunch for most of the race after that and let all the big teams try chase down the break but they couldn't... Break finished 32 secs ahead of us and I rolled in 31st. I was quite angry for most of the ride because I missed the break but to make it worse, Andrew came up to me after the race and said I had won a jersey for 60km of the race. That sprint challenge was actually a points sprint for the green jersey and there was a jersey for the person who had the most combined points in the KOM sprints and the Points sprint. So when I won that sprint it put me in the lead for the Pink Combination Jersey. Bugger. If I had known I was in the lead I would have got the team and I to help bring that break back ASAP because someone in that break won the Pink Jersey. Really gutted. We put tape at the beginning of each stage and write when each sprint competition is but we didn't write what each sprint was like whether it was a KOM or a sprint Challenge and I thought the first sprint was a sprint challenge. 

Still ended up 20th overall and came away with an iPad so not all too bad I guess. Would've done so much better if I had gotten into the break on the last day though. Ah well, at least I know I'm in good form and I'll give it another good crack in the upcoming tours. It was a pretty awesome atmosphere too with heaps of Frenchys coming out in support and we had some pretty good banter within the team.

That's all from me now. I'll chuck up a couple pics below

Team presentation on the 1st stage

Winning my iPad with the podium girls

There was a funny as band that followed the whole tour

Team presentation stage 4

The town we started stage 4 in

Thanks for reading

Nick

Wet n Wild Cobble Mania

Well it's pouring with rain and fairly cold outside so today I've just chilled out, cleaned up the house and I'm currently watching the Tour de France. Had a big race yesterday at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad which is a pretty big UCI amateur race. It was in the same region as the race I did last Wednesday in Zottegem so lots of cobbles and lots of steep punchy climbs. It was a rainy cold day, bit like today, so from the get go it was all pretty sketchy. My legs felt terrible for the first hour or so and I had really bad positioning because I basically couldn't move up cause my legs just wouldn't let me. Got caught up in a small crash and hit the deck but got up straight away fairly unscathed. Just a wittle scwatch on my ankle. After doing a few cobble sections I think all the cob webs got rattled out of my legs, was feeling a lot better. But because of my poor positioning I missed the main split so a bunch of us had to ride pretty hard to catch back up. Finally made it back to the main bunch and at this point there was only about 80 odd riders left out of the 190 starters and we were only halfway through the 170km course. Going up one of the climbs I just didn't have the legs to follow another big split so I rolled around the second group for most of the remaining race. On the last lap of the finishing circuit I rode away with a couple other riders from the remaining group of about 30 riders and ended up 42nd out of the 69 finishers. Was definitely up there as the hardest race I've done, had to really dig deep in the last 10k when I rode away from the bunch with those couple other guys. Quite a short run down of the race but that was pretty much it. Bit of carnage but I managed to miss most of it except for that one crash. Quite a few Kiwi boys were racing it too like Zeno, Tom Vessey, Hamish Schreurs and a few others. They all had a bit of bad luck with getting caught up behind crashes or punctures or broken equipment. Had a good sleep last night though.
Honestly didn't do too much exciting this week. Just been riding a bit and gearing up for the Tour des 2 Sevres in France next Friday. 3 day tour so hopefully I go good in this one, will be nice to get a good result.
But yea just trying to think of something to write but I got nothing.
So I guess that's it.

Thanks for reading

Nick